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Swadesh lists
Swadesh lists were originally devised by the linguist Morris Swadesh. In the 1940s to 1950s, Swadesh developed 100-word and 207-word lists of body parts, verbs, natural phenomena, and other words for comparative purposes. Swadesh proposed to use the words as a means of measuring the closeness of any pair of languages, a method he called lexicostatistics. This method has since been widely argued to be of little real scientific merit, giving results of no predictable reliability. He even proposed that they could be used to estimate the amount of time elapsed since any two related languages first began to diverge, proposing a technique called glottochronology. However, for most linguists this method is even more unreliable than lexicostatistics. The Swadesh list is also a useful tool for learning languages, and can be used to rapidly achieve basic knowledge of other languages. This is because, for basic communication, knowledge of vocabulary is more important than knowledge of grammar and syntax. Sometimes it is even possible to achieve (very) basic communication skills with no knowledge of the target language syntax whatsoever. To sort the table columns here (or for any other table in any HTML page), copy the javascript link from here (control-click the "sort table" link to copy the link) and once you have come back to this page, paste the javascript code you have copied into your URL window and run it. (The other table scripts there can also be used here.) Alternatively, instead of copying the link, you could drag it into your bookmarks toolbar, allowing the link to be accessible in the future from the toolbar. This sorting feature could be particularly useful if and when the categories of the Swadesh template and/or Basic English template are fleshed out. Assorted Swadesh lists :See also: Category:Swadesh lists Indo-European languages :Proto-Indo-European *Albanian *Ancient Greek and modern Greek *Armenian *Baltic languages **Latvian **Lithuanian *Celtic languages — Breton, Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx *Germanic languages — Frisian, Dutch, Afrikaans, Low Saxon, Limburgs, Kölsch, Luxembourgish, German, Danish, Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic, and Norwegian (Bokmål) **Afrikaans and Dutch ***Sranan **West Frisian *Hittite and Luwian *Indo-Iranian languages — Persian (+ romanized), Hindi/Urdu (Arabic and Devanāgarī scripts + romanized), Pashto (romanized only), Kurdish, Sanskrit (Devanāgarī + romanized), and Romani **Indo-Iranian languages (extended) — Persian (+ romanized), Hindi (+ romanized), Bengali (+ romanized), Romani, Tajik **Ossetian *Romance languages — Catalan, Interlingua, Portuguese, Romanian, Lengadocian Occitan, Gascon Occitan, and Romansh **French ***Antillean Creole ***Haitian Creole **Friulian **Iberian languages — Portuguese, Galician, Asturian, Aragonese, Catalan, Spanish, and Latin **Italian languages — Lombard, Neapolitan, Venetian, Sicilian, Maceratese, Macerata, Latin; see also Italian **Romanian ***Aromanian ***Istro-Romanian ***Megleno-Romanian **Walloon *Slavic languages — Old Church Slavonic, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Slovene, Macedonian **Kashubian *Tocharian B Other Eurasian languages *Afro-Asiatic languages — Arabic (+ romanized), Hebrew (+ romanized), Syriac (+ romanized), Akkadian (romanized only), and Ge'ez (+ romanized) **Arabic ***Cypriot Maronite Arabic ***Egyptian Arabic ***Palestinian Arabic ***Tunisian Arabic **Hausa **Maltese *Basque *Burushaski *Dravidian languages — Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Tulu, Gondi, Konda, and Brahui; see also Cognate sets for Dravidian languages. *Georgian *Uralic languages **Finno-Ugric languages — Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Erzya (Erzya Mordvin), Moksha (Moksha Mordvin), Komi (Komi-Zyrian), Mansi (Northern), Sámi (North) ***Baltic-Finnic languages — Finnish, Estonian, Võro, Livonian, Karelian, Veps, Votic *Turkic languages **Bashkir **''See also Turkic basic vocabulary. *''See the Intercontinental Dictionary Series for a huge selection of topical vocabulary lists of Northeast Caucasian languages. Pacific Rim languages North Asian *Altaic languages — Turkish, Mongolian, Oroqen, Korean, and Manchu **Japanese **Korean **Turkic languages; see also Turkic basic vocabulary. *Paleosiberian languages — Ainu, Nivkh, Chukchi, Yukhagir *Sino-Tibetan languages — Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Amoy Min Nan, Teochew Min Nan, Hakka, and Burmese, all with romanizations **Chinese ***Mandarin ***Cantonese ***Amoy Min Nan ***Gan ***Old Chinese **Tibeto-Burman languages — Burmese, Tibetan, Karen, Jingpho, Manange ***Burmese Southeast Asian and Oceanic *Austro-Asiatic languages — Khmer (+ romanized), Mon (+ romanized), Vietnamese, Chewong **Khmer **Vietnamese **''See also the SEAlang Mon-Khmer Etymological Dictionary. *Australian languages *Austronesian languages — Ilocano, Malay, Tagalog, Cebuano, Pampangan, Pangasinan, Sasak, Chamorro, Malagasy, Tahitian, Maori, and Sunda **Indonesian and Malay **Malayo-Polynesian languages **''See also Cognate sets for Austronesian languages and the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database. *Tai-Kadai languages — Thai (+ romanized), Lao (+ romanized), Shan (+ romanized), Southern Dong, Gelao, Buyang, Zhuang, Ong Be (Lingao), Hlai (Li), White Hmong **Thai *White Hmong Amerindian languages :See also: Eskimo-Aleut basic vocabulary and Indigenous languages of the Americas North American *Dené-Yeniseian languages — Ket, Tlingit, Navajo, Dena'ina, Hupa *Algonquian languages — Ojibwe, Lenape, Mohawk, Cherokee, Nottoway *Siouan languages — Lakota, Dakota dialects, Osage, Crow, Tutelo, Pawnee *Penutian languages *Hokan languages — includes Yuman languages of Ipai, Kiliwa, Cocopa *Pueblo languages *Muskogean languages *Uto-Aztecan languages — Nahuatl, Yaqui, Hopi, Shoshone, O'odham, Cahuilla, Tongva Central American *Oto-Manguean languages — Otomi, Mixtec, Zapotec, Mazahua, Totonac, Popoluca, Huave, Chontal *Purepecha *Mayan languages — K'iche', Q'eqchi', Tzotzil South American *South Andean region languages — Aymara, Kunza, Wichi, Mapudungun, Rapa Nui, with Spanish **Quechua *Tupi-Guarani languages **Guaraní *''See the Intercontinental Dictionary Series for a huge selection of topical vocabulary lists of indigenous South American languages''. African languages *Afro-Asiatic languages **Hausa *Niger-Congo languages — Yoruba, Igbo, Mandinka, Wolof **Bangala **Lingala **Swahili **Zulu Creoles, pidgins, and constructed languages *Antillean Creole *Esperanto *Haitian Creole *Interlingua *Lingua Franca Nova *Sranan Lists in need of expansion *Swadesh Lists for Australian languages *Swadesh lists for Dené-Yeniseian languages *Swadesh lists for the Dravidian languages of Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Tulu, Gondi, Konda, and Brahui *Swadesh lists for Italian languages *Swadesh lists for Mayan languages *Swadesh lists for Niger-Congo languages Templates For a basis to expand this list into other languages see the basic 207-word Swadesh template. See also this Swadesh template containing a comparative table for 8 different languages, and this Swadesh template with categories and parts-of-speech added. To visit a more extensive list of basic words in various languages (not a Swadesh list, though it includes and is cross-referenced to Swadesh words), see the Basic English word list. Templates for Swadesh lists * Template:Swadesh list 207 plain: plain list (English and selected language) * Template:Swadesh list 207 pronunciation: list with IPA pronunciation * Template:Swadesh list 207 trans pronunciation: list with transcription and pronunciation * Template:Swadesh list 207 trans: list with transcription in Latin characters * Template:Swadesh list 207 trans2: list with two transcriptions * Wiktionary:Swadesh template categorized Templates for boxes * Template:Swadesh lists: box with all Swadesh lists of individual languages * Template:family lists: box with all Swadesh lists of language families and branches Other templates * Template:Swadesh list presentation: Swadesh list presentation template * Template:Swadesh list templates: displays all templates * Template:langlist: used in ordinary dictionary entries of languages Swadesh list table of Germanic and Romance languages The words from Swadesh's original 100-word list are designated by an asterisk (*). In the composite list on this page, there are actually 207 words, since seven of the words in the 100-word list (breast, fingernail, full, horn, knee, moon, round) were not in the original 200-word list. External links World languages *Numbers in Over 5000 Languages (Scope-wise, probably the best multi-language site. This is the only database on the Internet with nearly all the world's languages in it; however, it only has the numerals 1-10.) *Intercontinental Dictionary Series (Quality-wise, probably the best multi-language site. Excellent interactive searching and comprehensive topically-organized lists. See also Intercontinental Dictionary Series on Wikipedia.) *Rosetta Project *World Loanword Database *Numeral Systems of the World's Languages *Unilang (Somewhat disorganized, but great resource for language learning) *Ethnologue (language demographics only) World languages — other existing wikis *http://wikitravel.org/en/Phrasebooks WikiTravel phrasebooks *http://wiki.langwiki.info/Main_Page (Wikilang) Regional languages *Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database *http://native-languages.org/ (Amerindian languages) *http://sealang.net/ (Southeast Asian languages) Category:Wiktionary:Multilingual issues * de:Wiktionary:Swadesh-Liste fr:Wiktionnaire:Liste_Swadesh ru:Викисловарь:Списки Сводеша